Remarkably
soon after my slim
escape from scrupulously formulaic 'music', I got a call from a guy who'd
gotten my name from one of the many Musician Available sites in London.
He was guitarist Ian Jones and the first thing he told me when I met him
outside the keyboard shop on Denmark Street and we went for a drink at the now defunct Marquee in London, was he'd been in a band
(when he
was 18) called 'Blitzkrieg' and had co-written the band's theme tune by the same
name, “Blitzkrieg”; a track Metallica covered on the B-side of one of their current singles and later was added to
their 'Garage Inc' album. Good
enough. After a few jars we were blood brothers without the wrist
slashing. That would come later.

At
the inception of our musical union, we recruited the perfect rhythm
section; Pete Riley (later a member of 'Republica' and now one of Britain's foremost session
percussionists and Professor at the London Drum Institute) and
Gavin Cooper - a bass-player and incumbent 'rock star' we were really fond
of who eventually disappeared west to tour with some band in America and hasn't been heard from
since. If you ever read this Gavin, give me a call. (Ian's asking after
you too.)

The
four of us immediately struggled with the most serious musicians' dilemma;
What to call the band. Suggested
names
like 'Painted Lady', 'Tattered Lace', all that
'there's-a-girl-in-the-band' kind of
cringy crap forced me to think along
simpler lines. Ian was talking about getting someone to pay for our
first recording session once we got the songs
together. He said, 'It'll be dead easy.' I said, 'Good, that's what
we'll call it.' DEAD
EASYwas born.

The
Dead Easy unit rehearsed 8 hours a day in a tiny cathedral of decibal reverence
located outside the sleepy Midlands village of Shepshed. Our first
gig was the surprise Loughborough Summer Festival, debuting as the support to
local lad headliners and mullet-bearers, Chrome Molly. After the applause died down at
Loughborough we marched confidently towards an apparently glorious future.
But that was a while, a few hiccups and a coupla bass player changes off.

Through the grim midlands winter we gigged and demo'd
our material in a tiny studio in Leicester. By early Spring, we had enough
material to pursue the obvious next steps: publishing/recording deals, glory,
swimming pools in BelAir, white lines tracing off into infinity,
endless sleepless dawns, sunrise over Sunset etc.
A journalist from Metal Hammer seeing one of our gigs, invited us to give him a
demo which he then reviewed for Metal Hammer's Demo page. His review with
band photo changed
everything.